The Romans knew her as Ceres, the Greeks called her Demeter. No matter. They are different names for the the same goddess.

Demeter was the goddess of fertility. You might know her by another name “Mother Nature”. The daughter of the ancient primordial god Cronos (Saturn) and Mother Earth (Rhea) she along with her other siblings were swallowed by her father at her birth to prevent a prophecy that one his children would overthrow him as master of the world and heavens. Demeter was freed when Rhea betrayed her husband. At the birth of Zeus, who we call Jupiter, she swaddled a rock and fed it to her husband. She then raised the child in secret, and raised him to avenge her misery at the hands of her husband. Zeus freed all of his siblings, and Neptune and Pluto joined Zeus in overthrowing Cronus. Rhea’s boys thus split the seas, the underword and the heavens among themselves, but none of them could rule their mother, Earth. Demeter, as Rhea’s daughter, however, ruled the fertility of the earth itself. Demeter had one daughter, Persephone, also called Kore (maiden) with Neptune being Persephone’s father.

So Persephone was stolen from her mother by Pluto (Hades) with a wink a nod by her father and his brother, and no one would tell Demeter why her daughter mysteriously disappeared. Thus in a totally Plutonian manner, Demeter was betrayed by her family.

Demeter, unlike the other Olympian gods and goddess of the time, walked the earth and worked directly with the people. During her desperate journey to find her child she shared the gifts of wheat and corn with the people she met. While Prometheus brought fire, she was the civilizing force, bringing stable food sources to the subjects of the gods.

Eventually Demeter found where her daughter was and who had her. She appealed to Zeus to have Persephone returned. The jig up, Zeus was in a real situation. Pluto wouldn’t give up his bride, promising to let the dead lose on the living if Zeus tried. Zeus couldn’t upset the balance of power between Neptune, Pluto and himself which would only lead to another heavenly war. Zeus denied Demeter’s petition. Mother Nature responded in the only way she could. In her grief she failed to bless the fields of man, and famine came and humans starved. Men and women railed against the gods, blaming them for their troubles and would make no more sacrifices to the gods. Since Zeus could not intercede himself, he appealed to more ancient forces, the Furies, who declared according to their laws that Persephone could return if she did not eat any of the food of the dead. The question was of course, did Persephone belong in the world of the living or the dead? This was the crux of the mystery religion that revolved around Demeter and Persephone.

But we should not omit to mention the very great benefaction which Demeter conferred upon mankind; for beside the fact that she was the discoverer of corn, she also taught mankind how to prepare it for food and introduced laws by obedience to which men became accustomed to the practice of justice, this being the reason, we are told, why she has been given the epithet Thesmophoros or Lawgiver. Surely a benefaction greater than these discoveries of hers one could not find; for they embrace both living and living honorably. (Diodorus Siculus V, 5)

The mysteries lasting two thousand years, were a major festival during the Hellenic era, later spreading to Rome.[4] The name of the town, Eleusís, is a variant of the noun έλευσις, éleusis, arrival.
The rites, ceremonies, and beliefs were kept secret, as initiation was believed to unite the worshipper with the gods and included promises of divine power and rewards in the afterlife.[5] There are many paintings and pieces of pottery that depict various aspects of the Mysteries. Since the Mysteries involved visions and conjuring of an afterlife, some scholars believe that the power and longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from psychedelic agents.[6]

Now the details of the initiatory rite are guarded among the matters not to be divulged and are communicated to the initiates alone; but the fame has traveled wide of how these gods appear to mankind and bring unexpected aid to those initiates of theirs who call upon them in the midst of perils. The claim is also made that men who have taken part in the mysteries become both more pious and more just and better in every respect than they were before. And this is the reason, we are told, why the most famous both of the ancient heroes and of the demi-gods were eagerly desirous of taking part in the initiatory rite; and in fact Jason and the Dioscuri, and Heracles and Orpheus as well, after their initiation attained success in all the campaigns they undertook, because these gods appeared to them. (Diodorus Siculus V, 48, 49)

The initiates of the Eleusian mysteries were promised a land of plenty in the Underworld in which to spend eternity, the Elysium fields watched over by the daughter of Demeter, Persephone.

And those that have three times kept to their oaths,
Keeping their souls clean and pure,
Never letting their hearts be defiled by the taint
Of evil and injustice,
And barbaric venality,
They are led by Zeus to the end:
To the palace of Kronos [the ruler of Elysium]

As the story goes, because Persephone had eaten a few pomegranate seeds, (and more on that later) curiously a symbol of fertility, it was decided that she would spend the four months of the winter in the Underworld and the rest of the time with her mother. When she was in the Underworld however, she is said to watch over the humans in Hades care. Persephone was seen as a vital link between the world of the living and the dead. and the reason why the fields returned to fertility in the spring.

The mysteries themselves, though the exact nature of the rites are not known, celebrated the love of a mother for her child, the child’s death and the symbolic rebirth of the child in the reunion with her mother.

Caught up in my Demeter role
I brought winter to my grieving soul.
Numbing ice, concealing snow,
No nurturing soil for seed to sow.
Longing to sleep in dreamless haze,
Aching for peace from ravaging rage,
I ask to serve, to give to others’ lives
what I am bereft of.
But the gods in their wisdom,
send me to fools,
wicked, nasty fools who mock me
knowing not my sorrow, knowing not what I disguise.
Hiding behind hysterically blinded eyes,
I prepare for my journey deep below.

Others have travelled this path before me
and lived to tell the tale,
strengthened by their devotion
to their stolen loves.
In a bubble of my own clouded atmosphere,
I shall fear no evil.
Blood coagulates around my heart
allowing no feeling
but deadening pain.
My lips are bound.
My tearducts desiccated by vacuum.
Thus am I prepared.
I am not prepared at all
for what I may find.
But neither do I care.
This is all about desperation.
This is all about emotion so intense
that I am beyond response;
there is nothing left to feel.
Step by step
I descend.

Something about a veil.
But more like
a brick wall —
there may be explosives
hidden behind that solid image.
It seems unyielding.
There are glimmers,
minor crumblings.
At times the bricks seem to shift.
Unexplained.
If I let myself,
if I am very quiet,
molecules move silently,
disarming resistence,
there will appear a stair
to my senses of solid granite,
wet with the drip of
melting ice.

Treacherous.
A misstep could kill me,
falling all the way,
breaking stair by stair.
I must take care.
Make careful measure:
What is the true worth
of what I might find?

My weight is unsteady.
Gaping below –
a colorless vortex,
a lake of emptiness
sucking in all sensation.
It is enormous, all-consuming.
My salvation.
I leap.
Overwhelmed,
I am sucked in and through,
breathlessly,
silently,
alone in the Universe
of silent, inexorable,
intensity.
Pulled into an event horizon
a singularity
another, nether realm.

Every act
Every thought
Every dream
Every wish
Everyone I’d lost
at every stage of
our shared experience.
Every sin.
Here they live,
each acting out it’s own story
in a cavernous space,
of encapsulated diaramas.
I don’t sense my body
– only a vague weight
of uncertain dimensions.
It is time released –
all happening at once eternally.
No choice but to let it wash over me,
wave after chaotic, metaphoric wave.
Sound/light/fragrance/taste/touch/emotion
craftily embodied in exquisite, endless pain.

Is there a voice here?
Is there a way to make it talk
in reasonable tones?
Is there a way to unravel the senses,
to frame neat packets of sense
and talk with them reasonably?
Is there a rationale within which
to deal with the feelings,
to put them in place,
rational and calm and dignified?
Is it too much to ask?
And of whom?
There is no guide, no authority,
none but me, infinitely mirrored.
What will become of all these “I”s
staring at me, demanding
retribution, stark, cold justice
Just Ice and Cold and bitter, stinging snow
to wrap my frozen soul in hope of sleep
while Nazgul track my dreams.

The innocent must bear the sacrifice.
Power too dangerous to the wise
and power-enabled,
that would overtake their skills,
turn them to evil purpose,
may be safely given to innocent hands, destroying
only the sacrificial lamb.
The wise, in their compassion,
may suffer unhealing wounds
of painful knowledge;
but the innocent are destroyed,
pitted inside out by corrosion,
unable to fight,
unable to understand.
I am not wise, nor innocent.
I look into the battalion of
mirrored images
and am left just short of
destruction,
picking at scabs,
unwilling to heal
my agony of remorse
and betrayal.
I didn’t know,
couldn’t know,
no one told me.
They said:
“Do what you are told.
It will all be alright in the end.”
But whose end, right for whom?

What is the treasure I have come here seeking?
That sweet, sparkling child,
who played upon the hillside,
picking flowers
to weave into our hair –
I didn’t mean to leave her unprotected.
I left her in the care of trusted friends
while I went off to earn our daily bread.
The screaming
in my heart
as she was taken,
the shattering reverberations,
I’d never known such pain.
It stopped me in my tracks,
overcame my senses,
never leaves me, never lessens,
though in time, like anything, I guess
recedes into background noise
that I may hear my orders,
do as duty demands.

But, duty to what demands?
The gods,
my very brethren,
I realize, have betrayed me.
Cut to my womanly core
to drink my blood in bacchanalia.
The mirror images smile grotesquely.
I am sickened,
brought to my humbled knees,
not in obeisance.
I have not the strength nor will
to stand.
Perhaps I shall dwell here in hell,
unmoving,
unresponsive,
bleeding out,
pale and ashen.
Serving them no more.
No bread upon the table.
Just Ice and snow.

II.

“Mommy,” she cried, dead eyes open,
awash in tears,
“I didn’t mean to leave you.
I didn’t know I would be gone so long.”

My desiccated heart bathes gladly
in those soothing tears.
I am brought back to my journey.
The mirror images have softened.
Every face, every form, every failure,
every sin
I can’t quite grasp why it would matter,
how these essences
combine with mine.
Perhaps I am hallucinating.
Perhaps none of us
exist at all.

Baby girl, I have always loved you.
Hated you for dying.
Hated life and death for dividing us.
Hated, blamed,
damned to hell,
all those mirror images,
all those wraiths and wretched
wayward souls who pass me by.
I have loved and lost and
lonely wandered.
And wondered why.
I hold you close as
I look into the mirror, deeply,
drink of the magick of lethe.
Falling, gently, easily, even leisurely,
letting go and drinking in,
all that Hell allows
now that we create the rules.

Caught up in my Hecate role,
I feel the power of my soul.
Rain and wind and ice and snow
I feel you all from here below,
and revel in elemental energy.
I am the wind, the seas, the fire
I am all will and all desire.
It is me you love, and me you hate –
I am the master of your fate.
Yet I am hidden from all sight,
beyond the reach or need of light.
I have found my peace,
my place, my voice.
Take heed, O’ mortal,
create your choice.
Create it every day.

The Ceres-Pluto conjunction in Cap during this Venus Retrograde is a huge part of the retro process, I think. I’ve been following the movements, and it’s interesting that Ceres came within one degree of conjuncting Pluto, went retrograde, and is now on the trek back to the conjunction, finally, October 19.

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